§4. Our creation and God’s
Incarnation most intimately connected. As by the Word man was called
from non-existence into being, and further received the grace of a
divine life, so by the one fault which forfeited that life they again
incurred corruption and untold sin and misery filled the world.

You are wondering, perhaps, for what possible
reason, having proposed to speak of the Incarnation of the Word, we are
at present treating of the origin of mankind. But this, too, properly
belongs to the aim of our treatise. 2. For in speaking of the
appearance of the Saviour amongst us, we must needs speak also of the
origin of men, that you may know that the reason of His coming down was
because of us, and that our transgression203203 Cf.
Orat. ii. 54, note 4.
called forth the loving-kindness of the Word, that the Lord should both
make haste to help us and appear among men. 3. For of His becoming
Incarnate we were the object, and for our salvation He dealt so
lovingly as to appear and be born even in a human body. 4. Thus, then,
God has made man, and willed that he should abide in incorruption; but
men, having despised and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised
and contrived evil for themselves (as was said204204c.
Gent. 3–5. in
the former treatise), received the condemnation of death with which
they had been threatened; and from thenceforth no longer remained as
they were made, but205205Eccles. vii. 29; Rom. i.
21, 22. were being corrupted
according to their devices; and death had the mastery over them as
king206206Rom. v. 14.. For transgression of the commandment was
turning them back to their natural state, so that just as they have had
their being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might
look for corruption into nothing in the course of time. 5. For if, out
of a former normal state of non-existence, they were called into being
by the Presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it followed naturally
that when men were bereft of the knowledge of God and were turned back
to what was not (for what is evil is not, but what is good is), they
should, since they derive their being from God who IS, be everlastingly
bereft even of being; in other words, that they should be disintegrated
and abide in death and corruption. 6. For man is by nature mortal,
inasmuch as he is made out of what is not; but by reason of his
likeness to Him that is (and if he still preserved this likeness by
keeping Him in his knowledge) he would stay his natural corruption, and
remain incorrupt; as Wisdom207207Wisd. vi. 18. says: “The
taking heed to His laws is the assurance of immortality;” but
being incorrupt, he would live henceforth as God, to which I suppose
the divine Scripture refers, when it says: “I have208208Ps. lxxxii. 6,
sq. said ye are gods, and ye are all sons of the
most Highest; but ye die like men, and fall as one of the
princes.”